SENATE AND HOUSE negotiators on Wednesday proposed a new nine-month limit on how long families can stay in the state’s emergency shelters, while authorizing withdrawals up to $426 million from a state savings account to spend on the ongoing crisis. Top lawmakers crafting the compromise supplemental budget bill landed on pulling an additional $251 million for fiscal 2024 from the so-called Transitional Escrow Account, a one-time revenue source that boasts a balance of $863 million. The Senate’s chief negotiator, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Rodrigues, said in a statement that the ..read more

THIS FRIDAY, the University of Massachusetts community will gather in Amherst to celebrate the inauguration of UMass Amherst’s 31st leader, Chancellor Javier Reyes. Dr. Reyes was born and raised in Mexico City, where he attended Tecnológico de Monterrey. He came to the United States in the late 1990s to pursue his doctorate in economics at Texas A&M University, and has been a rising star in higher education ever since. He has served in faculty and academic leadership positions at the University of Arkansas, West Virginia University, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. As chancellor a ..read more

THE HOUSING CRISIS in Massachusetts is a moral travesty affecting us at every level, and its contrast to the wealth invested in gleaming office space could not be starker. At the front lines are homeless children and their families. We’ve seen the heartbreaking images – families with young children forced to sleep on Logan Airport’s floors because there is no space in the region’s emergency shelter system. And we’ve also read the headlines about empty offices in commercial real estate buildings around Boston, indeed across Massachusetts. There are literally millions of square feet of vacant s ..read more

LESS THAN 20 MONTHS ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a planeload of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard to give Massachusetts a taste of what it’s like to have unexpected visitors show up on the doorstep. The DeSantis stunt grabbed a lot of attention, but the plane carried only 48 migrants and it was fairly easy for the state to support them. In the end, immigration for most Massachusetts residents remained a distant, low priority issue. But starting in the second half of last year, more and more migrants started to arrive in Massachusetts. And as they arrived and began to overwhelm t ..read more

HOUSE SPEAKER Ron Mariano, who is trying to keep the Healey administration on a short leash when it comes to the emergency shelter system, indicated that this year’s presidential and congressional  elections may determine whether the program continues or not. Mariano on Wednesday unveiled the House’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, which includes $500 million for the operation of the emergency shelter system. The original budget for the system this year was $325 million, but the cost has ballooned to well over $900 million as the program, which provides housing to homeless families and ..read more

The state’s emergency shelter law, once regarded as a commitment of the state, keeps morphing into something new as more and more migrants come to Massachusetts. On Monday, Gov. Maura Healey made a new change in the program, imposing one-month restrictions on families staying in overflow housing shelters while they wait for shelter spots to open up. The governor announced the new requirements as the overflow sites have swelled with families in need of housing and unable to secure a spot in the larger Emergency Assistance (EA) shelter system that Healey capped at 7,500 families last ..read more

SENATE DEMOCRATS on Monday teed up their own proposal to cap how long people can stay in the strained emergency family shelter system, while enabling more than $800 million in state savings to flow toward the crisis response. The Senate will vote Thursday on a redrafted bill (S 2708) imposing new limitations on family shelter stays, a potential cost-controlling measure after months of record demand inflicted massive pressure on the state’s balance sheet and shelter systems. Like the bill that cleared the House earlier this month, the Senate bill could push some people out of the system after ..read more

OVER THE LAST three decades, the demographics of immigrants coming to the Boston area have changed. According to a new report, their countries of origin have shifted, many more end up residing outside the city, and well over half are landing in good-paying jobs. In 1990, six European countries were among the top 10 countries of origin for immigrants in the Greater Boston area. By 2021, no European country made it into the top 10. Instead, China topped the list, followed primarily by countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. The report, released by Boston Indicators, the research arm of ..read more

FOR A BRIEF MOMENT on Beacon Hill, former president Donald Trump transformed into the evil Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter – He Who Must Not Be Named. During a budget hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey wrestled with the rising cost of the emergency shelter program, which serves a large number of Massachusetts residents but has been financially swamped by migrants coming to the state from other countries. The cost has ballooned from $325 million to more than $900 million this fiscal year and the governor’s answer has always been that immigration is a Washington problem that ..read more

WHEN IMMIGRANTS began arriving in Massachusetts earlier this year in large waves, crowding into hotels and emergency shelters, a sense of crisis took root. We were in uncharted territory as tension grew between Massachusetts’ right to shelter law and the state’s capacity to handle the influx of immigrants. Massachusetts officials have done admirable work in housing an unexpected surge of arriving families, and state officials have worked diligently to help immigrants obtain authorization to work in the United States. As a Commonwealth, we should be proud of our commitment to supporting refuge ..read more